


We Never Have to Wake Up

by SympathyForTheBlinderDevil



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Brooding, Drama, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Mystery, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 13:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19174315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SympathyForTheBlinderDevil/pseuds/SympathyForTheBlinderDevil
Summary: They say that Tommy never wanted anyone after the war, but they didn't know about Delia.





	We Never Have to Wake Up

They all said that Tommy didn’t want anyone after the war, but they didn’t know about Delia. 

Tommy and Delia kept it quiet. It was better that way. What they had was complicated enough without his people or hers sticking their noses in. She worked for his brother, and he made book in the same circles as her cousins. Best not to mix them all together.

It started when he found himself watching her. Trying to figure her out. She had an odd look about her. Not her hair; It was chestnut brown with a tapestry of red woven through it in the light. Rather beautiful, really. And it wasn’t her eyes; they were the color of rich coffee with flecks of gold. He discovered this when he caught her staring back. It was more the dark shadows under her eyes, and the way her skin almost glowed with translucence, like she’d never seen the sun. She smiled the way girls do, but she was sad. It was almost like she wanted him to know. He was sad too. They had that much in common.

He waited in the street for her one night. Somehow an understanding had passed between them of which even they weren’t conscious. As he leaned against the bricks, he could hear Harry give her the “all clear” to leave. Her heard John offer to walk her home, and he heard her politely decline. He didn’t know that she secretly hoped that he would somehow be there in the dark night waiting. When she came outside he wordlessly fell into step beside her and she let him. 

She let him walk her home, and when they got there she let him in.

He was not a man who believed in god, but he felt like she was a blessing. To the world, she was a melancholy barmaid, but to him, she was a refuge. To him, she was all soft quilts and a plush feather bed. The warmth of dim candlelight and the coolness of fresh cotton sheets. She was a worn pale slip gliding over supple curves. He could listen to her words, dripping gold like honey into his ear, or he could doze in the silence and warmth of her embrace. With or without his pipe, sleeping with her was a luxury, for he got precious little sleep without her.

The knock on her door would come at midnight, and there he’d be. Silent, brooding, icy blue eyes shadowed by his flat cap.

“Come on in. You’ll catch your death of cold out there”

He’d come in and she’d take his coat and cap before he wrapped himself around her and buried his nose in her hair. 

“Why do you come here?” she’d whisper in the darkness, “You could find the same thing, other arms, anywhere in the city.”

“You feel like home. My head is quiet when I’m with you.”

 

People assumed he was away to the dens of vice when he didn’t come home, and he let them. What he found in Delia was his alone. She understood that he was broken; she was broken too. She didn’t ask him to explain the nightmares, the sweats, the nights that he needed the pipe that he kept under her mattress. He was grateful for that, and he never forgot her kindness. 

Then there came a time when his ambitions called him away. He didn’t knock on her door at midnight. He didn’t come to the Garrison to watch her sweeping. They had never needed explanations, and so he didn’t tell her that before he drifted off to sleep he thought of the way her hair smelled of iris and sandalwood. It tortured him to stay away, but he couldn’t draw her into his madness. No one knew of their nights together, so no one told her about the mess in which he found himself. He was fixing races and grabbing power away from giants while she wiped tables and sang sad songs to pass the lonely nights. 

Then came the day that Tommy came back to the Garrison. The King, Billy Kimber, came into the place soon after. She sent him looks that begged him to be careful as he sent her away. He didn’t acknowledge her. He froze her out. Out of danger, out of the line of fire. But she didn’t understand. That afternoon, she splashed her swollen eyes with cool water from the basin in her washstand. It was over. She thought of the way that he stared right through her. She sent her resignation letter and cried herself to sleep. 

At midnight she heard the pounding. It was him, wild-eyed and furious. 

“What’s this?” He held her message aloft.

“I can’t stay. Not like this.”

“What are we paying you? I’ll tell Arthur to double it.”

She slowly shook her head. “You really think it’s about money? Was it all an act? The romance, the oblivion, the escape.”

“What are you talking about? I need you, Delia. As soon as things settle down we can make this work.”

“I wish that’s how things were, but they’re not. I’ll always be alone in the daylight, Tommy. You are like a beautiful dream. The morning will come and you will leave me.”

He gripped both sides of her face. He wouldn’t let her break their eye contact. “We can make it real.”

Tears began to blur her vision. “I’ve always had to look over my shoulder, around every corner, always guess the angle and what everybody wanted from me. I thought that you were different.”

“Let me do that from now on; I will look out for you. Let me take care of you.”

She tried to shake her head, but his hands held her still. “I thought you were different, but no. You will always leave me.”

He pressed his forehead to hers and squeezed his eyes closed to fight the pain in his breaking heart. “I’m here. I promise I won’t leave. We never have to wake up.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you know anything about me, you know that I am shite at one-shots. Yeah, I will write them, but then like a weirdo picking at a scab, I keep messing with it until I turn it into a multi-chapter work. Let's see if I can leave well enough alone this time. (My apologies to any scab pickers I may have offended.)


End file.
